AWI(4) NetBSD Programmer's Manual AWI(4)
NAMEawi - AMD PCnetMobile IEEE 802.11 PCMCIA wireless network driver
SYNOPSISawi* at pcmcia? function ?DESCRIPTION
The awi driver supports various IEEE 802.11 wireless cards which run AMD
PCnetMobile firmware based on AMD 79c930 controller with Intersil (for-
merly Harris) PRISM radio chipset. It provides access to 32kb of memory
shared between the controller and the host. All host/device interaction
is via this shared memory, which can be accessed either via PCMCIA memory
space or I/O space. The awi driver encapsulates all IP and ARP traffic
as 802.11 frames.
The driver works both in infrastructure mode and in adhoc (independent
BSS) mode.
In infrastructure mode, it communicates with an Access Point which serves
as a link-layer bridge between an Ethernet and the wireless network. An
access point also provides roaming capability which allows wireless node
to move between access points.
In adhoc mode, it communicates peer to peer. Though it is more efficient
to communicate between wireless nodes, the coverage is limited spatially
due to lack of roaming capability.
In addition to these two mode in IEEE 802.11 specification, the awi driv-
er also supports a variant of adhoc mode out of spec for DS radio cards,
which makes possible to communicate with WaveLAN adhoc mode of wi(4)
driver. The NWID doesn't affect in this mode.
Another mode added to the awi driver can be used with old Melco access
point with 2Mbps card, which actually use IEEE 802.11 adhoc mode with en-
capsulation of raw Ethernet packet including header in 802.11 frames.
For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8) and
ifmedia(4).
HARDWARE
Cards supported by the awi driver include:
BayStack 650 1Mbps Frequency Hopping PCCARD adapter
BayStack 660 2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
Icom SL-200 2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
Melco WLI-PCM 2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
NEL SSMagic 2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
Netwave AirSurfer Plus
1Mbps Frequency Hopping PCCARD adapter
Netwave AirSurfer Pro
2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
Nokia C020 WLAN
2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
Farallon SkyLINE
2Mbps Direct Sequence PCCARD adapter
The original Xircom Netwave AirSurfer is supported by the cnw(4) driver,
and the PRISM-II cards are supported by the wi(4) driver.
MEDIA SELECTION
In addition to default Auto media type, the DS cards support DS1 and DS2
media types, while the FH cards support FH1 media type. For each media
type, adhoc mediaopt can be used to indicate the driver to operate in ad-
hoc mode. The flag0 mediaopt should be used only with old access point
which operates in IBSS mode. For DS radio cards, adhoc,flag0 mediaopt
can be used for wi(4) compatible WaveLAN adhoc mode.
To configure more detailed parameters for the awi driver, wiconfig(8) can
be used.
DIAGNOSTICSawi0: unable to allocate memory space; using i/o only Indicates that the
driver was not able to allocate 32kb of PCMCIA bus address space into
which to map the device; the driver will use the (slightly slower) i/o-
space only access methods to read and write to the shared memory. Since
by default, NetBSD only allocates 16kb of address space per PCMCIA con-
troller, this message is in some sense to be expected and should not be a
cause for alarm. See pcmcia(4) for information on how to increase the
memory available to the PCMCIA controller.
awi0: failed to complete selftest (%s) The device failed to complete its
self test. In some circumstances, resetting device after power on fails.
Re-inserting the card or down-then-up interface may be helpful.
awi0: associated with %s ssid %s channel %d signal %d The device has
successfully synchronized with the identified Access Point or BSS and is
ready to relay traffic.
awi0: authentication failed (reason %d)awi0: association failed (reason %d) The access point refuses the au-
thentication or association request from the device.
awi0: no recent beacons from %s; rescanning The device has not heard a
beacon from its currently associated Access Point recently, and is look-
ing for a new access point.
awi0: transmit timeout The device failed to generate an interrupt to ac-
knowledge a transmitted packet.
awi0: failed to lock interrupt The system was unable to obtain the lock
to access shared memory.
awi0: command %d failed %x The device failed to complete the request
from the system.
SEE ALSOarp(4), cnw(4), ifmedia(4), netintro(4), pcmcia(4), wi(4), ifconfig(8),
wiconfig(8)Am79C930 PCnet Mobile Single-Chip Wireless LAN Media Access Controller,
http://www.amd.com.
HISTORY
The awi device driver first appeared in NetBSD 1.5.
AUTHORS
The initial version of the awi driver was written by Bill Sommerfeld
<sommerfeld@netbsd.org>. Then the awi driver module completely rewritten
to support cards with DS phy and to support adhoc mode by
Atsushi Onoe <onoe@netbsd.org>.
NetBSD 1.6 September 18, 2001 2

You can also request any man page by name and (optionally) by section:

Command:

Section:

Architecture:

Collection:

Use the DEFAULT collection to view manual pages
for third-party software.